00 ripe—Where We Come From

by Matthew Stadler 

In summer 2001, a young couple in Portland, Oregon, Michael Hebb and Naomi Pomeroy, built a table in their rented bungalow on North- east Failing Street. It was a clever contraption with long, hinged pieces of plywood that unfolded from the wall to rest on old wine crates. It took up their whole front room and seated about twenty. They invited twenty friends to dinner, which Naomi made from whatever ingredi- ents were fresh that day. The friends who came to eat left something in return. The first night they left chairs, but after that they usually left money. Michael and Naomi called their gathering “family supper.” Fam- ily supper was a lot of fun. There was no advertising, so you only went if you knew someone who’d gone before. Like many small-scale diy projects, it was lively and storied. Dishes were washed by drunk guests in a plastic kiddie pool in the front yard. The five Weber grills Naomi used caught the back porch on fire once. One night, Benicio Del Toro came; he was down the street filmingThe Hunted and wandered over,  matthew stadler ripe—where we come from  wondering what the noise and laughter was all about. Michael and family supper, and where the back room events would take place). Naomi’s newborn daughter, August, slept on the table during supper The back room took the common table of family supper and added a and got passed around to make room for the salad, or some other plat- deliberate conversation. As host, I would invite a writer I particularly ter of food. Some of this is true, and all of it was exciting, and family admired, and we’d eat together, fifty or so of us, and then we’d all supper quickly grew into a food business called “ripe.” have a conversation with our special guest. Things got fancier pretty And here a sticky word enters the scene, often portrayed as the fast. We added live music, bottomless wine and brandy, and a pro- snake in the garden: “business.” When and how did this table become gram of commissioned publications to round out the experiment. a business? It grew into a huge one—an internationally recognized You’re holding one of the results in your hands. group of three restaurants with nearly a hundred employees—that Michael and Naomi made it easy to jump over the cliff of these ultimately collapsed under the weight of debt. It also grew into a kind good intentions and find out what lay at the bottom. That summer of art project, a deliberate incubator of local culture that used the res- of 2005, we floated on the warm winds of ambition and Michael’s taurant economy to support everything from sculptors and architects special talent for enlisting the optimism and resources of a huge com- (commissioned to design and build the restaurants) to dance compa- munity. Ripe would cook and run the house for below-cost, just to get nies, fire-breathers, djs, and presenting organizations (given venues, things off the ground. Winemakers would donate a few cases for each fundraising dinners, and food and drink). event, contributions to a worthy cultural experiment. An e-mail from Ripe even had a writer in residence—me. Having long admired Michael and Naomi was all it took to fill the fifty seats. Soon the back family supper and marveled at ripe’s support of artists, I wondered how room was up and ready for whichever special guests I cared to book. the restaurant could help invigorate the civic life of literature. I asked I had some writers in mind, but music and the visual arts are also Michael and Naomi to take me on as “writer in residence”—none of us key elements in the literary mix; that’s my belief, anyway. And so two knew what that might mean—and their “yes” was, in essence, a way to essential collaborators joined our experiment that summer—a musi- throw the question back to me: Show us how dining together can help cian named Curtis Knapp, who chose musical guests to play, live, at the city develop a robust literary culture. each event, and Stephanie Snyder, the director and curator of Reed The first answer, the simplest, was the back room (which took its College’s Cooley Gallery, in Portland, who would select visual artists name from the alleyway catering kitchen into which ripe had stuffed to be special guests at their own back room events.  matthew stadler ripe—where we come from 

By August we were ready to begin. I decided that food and politics people barely know he exists, not so good when people obey and should be our first subject, so we invited the region’s most trenchant acclaim him, worse when they despise him … But of a good leader urban-planning critic, Randy Gragg (who was then just about to leave who talks little when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say, town for a Loeb Fellowship at Harvard), and a local chef and political ‘We did it ourselves.’” A good host provides the right, simple arrange- activist named Ron Paul, to discuss the ways that Oregon’s land-use ments, the timing, and the conversational irrigation to get the whole, politics had planted the seeds for a unique food culture in Portland. rich organism of a group growing and blossoming into its finest flow- At the back room, we would be feasting on Oregon foods. What part ers.) At the first back room event, I learned the many ways a host can did the state’s visionary land-use laws play in setting that table? enable, or disable, an evening. It was a beautiful August evening. The loading dock/alleyway onto A host should grant inclusion. Everyone who comes should be which the back room opened had a small herb garden and enough welcomed, individually if possible. A host should give permission, room to sit or mingle, so we started the evening drinking out in the handing over the resources of the space explicitly to the guests; at sunshine. There was superb wine (ripe had catered a reception for the the back room, that means telling everyone they can sit wherever governor of Oregon the previous week, and the crowd hadn’t made they like; it means introducing guests to the bar and to the servers; it much of a dent in the wine supply—we were the beneficiaries), and means letting them know what the plans are. A host should pace the we listened to the drum, bass, and piano improvisations of the Watery evening, and a host should also say goodbye. Graves while the cooks sweated in the heat of the stoves. At family supper, Michael and Naomi took care of many of these I like wine and good company, and so my duties as host quickly things through the ritual of a welcoming toast, and we adopted that slipped out of mind. Hosting, I soon discovered, is an essential skill custom for the back room. Pacing was another story. At family sup- that makes this kind of social gathering really work. Enabling a com- per, the kitchen drove the night. When the food was hot, everyone munity conversation—giving people a chance to think together in ate; dessert came out when it was ready; when the food was gone, it public—is a lot like “leadership,” as Anne Focke describes it in her was time to say goodnight. At the back room, the kitchen was just marvelous essay, “A Pragmatic Response to Real Circumstances,” one spinning wheel in an interlocking arrangement of intricate parts. which the back room commissioned in January 2006 (and which is The musicians played as the cooks cooked and the guests arrived. Too included in this volume). She quotes Lao-tzu: “A leader is best when much drinking too early could sink the ship. As host, I had to check  matthew stadler ripe—where we come from 10 in with all these parties and run the wheels in unison, toasting to We don’t ask them to read out loud or recite. The back room is a bring us to the table when the time was right. chance to think together—not to listen to recitations of previously I believe it is better to eat and drink first and have a conversation composed bits of genius; not to sleepwalk through a rehashing of old later. No point rushing through talk to appease an empty stomach. questions; not to hear sound bites or the parroting of received wisdom. So after the toast, fifty-plus people sat down, elbow to elbow and To think together in an open-ended conversation is a rare skill, a lot knee to knee, to pass huge platters of food down the long tables for like reading—real reading—the sort of reading a good book demands. our shared meal. A common table is among the richest places to begin At its core, the back room offers us a chance to read our guest, slowly, a conversation with new friends. Dinner means meeting new people, keenly, hungry for the textures and surprise of thinking together. It and hoping they won’t hog the salad or main course. Quite a bit gets is thereby, I think, a fundamentally literary pursuit (regardless of the communicated in reaching to snag, say, a dwindling bottle of wine, guest’s specialty: literary, visual, musical or what-have-you). or working up the courage to ask if anyone else wants the last of the On our first night we didn’t really get there. As surprised as I was buttered long beans. to be reminded of the conversation after dinner, the assembled crowd At the first back room I literally forgot that there was more to the was more surprised. When I called their attention to the front and evening than that. The food was so good, the wine so plentiful, that asked Randy Gragg to explain the concept of a “food-shed” (it’s like a I settled into a long conversation with four men who were starting watershed, but it describes the region of farming that drains produce their own fashion company. Imagine my surprise when the chef, Troy and foods into a metropolitan center), it felt like I’d called the kids in MacLarty, came over to ask if I wanted to start the conversation before to do their homework. From there to Senate Bill 70 and the impact of or after he brought out the dessert. The conversation! Portland’s urban growth boundary was a long traverse for a very long At the back room, we sit down to talk with our special guest when evening. We lost a good half of the crowd before we were through. the after-dinner brandy and dessert are being brought to the table. It That was the beginning of our education together. The back room can be a confusing time for the guest. Full, a little drunk, and often became a habit for a couple dozen regulars, and within a month deep into some topic with table neighbors, they are beckoned to come or two we had built up our stamina and acquired some skills. (My sit up front with the host and start a conversation with all of us. skills as host, not least of all.) The pace of the evenings became more 11 matthew stadler ripe—where we come from 12 relaxed and expansive, while newcomers to the group took the cue of again, and the guests and musicians became a much more crucial part the hardy regulars. Most evenings that fall, we went the extra mile of the draw. Rather than a steady group of ripe regulars, we began to together, keeping our guests well into a fourth hour. see different crowds for different kinds of events. Given ripe’s popu- The food got better and better. Troy MacLarty (who as of this larity, getting the mix right took some planning and effort. writing runs the kitchen at Portland’s storied Lovely Hula Hands) In one case, we collaborated with Chloe Eudaly, the founder of started cherry-picking rare ingredients from the ripe larder, special Portland independent bookstore Reading Frenzy. The art critic and orders that somehow didn’t sell out at the restaurant. One night we ar- essayist Lawrence Weschler was using a book tour to help promote the rived to our $36 prix fixe back room dinner (bottomless wine, brandy, fortunes of smaller booksellers like Reading Frenzy. Chloe thought it and tip included) to find he was serving us individually stuffed quails. was a good opportunity for her store to hold a more ambitious event, And that was just the main course. (Troy “left for other opportuni- and so we invited Weschler to the back room. To get the mix right, we ties” soon after that, and I can’t help but blame the quail.) By Decem- embargoed the announcement to ripe’s list until after Reading Frenzy ber, when Naomi took over, the events were selling out for the food had a chance to send one out to theirs. We also tacked a presale of alone. It didn’t seem to matter who we programmed. Weschler’s book on to every ticket. The result was fifty hardback book Naomi’s first back room was organized around my novel, Allan sales for Reading Frenzy and an evening unburdened by the drama of Stein, which features a great deal of food and wine. The idea was to consumer choice. Everyone arrived at dinner to find their fresh new have her cook from a novel. She took to it with no hesitations, begin- copies, and the discussion was able to stray far away from the tedium ning the menu with scotch and Doritos (the scene she drew from is in- of pushing product. cluded in this book, on pp. xxx–xxx). A “smashed sweet squash with Weschler’s dinner was sandwiched between two back rooms that a glaze of Madeira and honey” came beside a “great piggish grunt of were part of an exhibition, called DISH, conceived and curated by a wine.” That night we talked about fiction and its place in politics. A Stephanie Snyder and Nan Curtis, then director of the Feldman young musician named Jona Bechtolt, playing as YACHT, astonished Gallery at Portland’s Pacific Northwest College of Art. DISH us all with the cacophony of beats he could massage from his laptop. featured fifty-three bowls made by Portland artist Daniel Duford, The back room with Naomi cooking was as good as it gets. As on which Duford glazed an unfolding narrative. We ate from the spring came on, our evenings began drifting out into the herb garden bowls, telling the story out loud as it was revealed by our eating, and 13 matthew stadler ripe—where we come from 14 even licking the bowls clean. The first of these nights was sheer chaos. from guy wires hung off the exposed wooden beams; barrels of fire Photographer Lucien Samaha documented the guests and their bowls, appeared in the alleyway, portable cookers for an ever-expanding feast; moving among the narrow tables to “interview” each diner as he or the ripe restaurants and their remarkable chefs—Tommy Habetz at she finished eating. He also set up a makeshift portrait studio by the the Gotham Building Tavern, Morgan Brownlow at clarklewis—were toilets and made everyone pose there with a dish. There was a lot of being lauded in the international food press, and Michael and Naomi, drinking, and Kansas duo Drakkar Sauna pounded out their loud for better or worse, had been taken up as glamorous poster-children for hillbilly/punk music. the next wave of the putative “food revolution.” For the second DISH event (on the other side of Weschler’s), When a big literary festival, Wordstock, came to ask if we’d host the back room invaded the white-walled confines of the Feldman one of their literary dinners that April, it was easy to say yes and—in Gallery, where Daniel’s dishes and Lucien’s documentation had been the heady atmosphere of possibilities catalyzed by Michael and Nao- installed as an art exhibition. We brought the food, drink, and music, mi’s superb optimism—to ask if, rather than host one of the Word- our whole loud, crazy conversation, inside the gallery and dirtied the stock authors, we couldn’t just send a note to someone special and get tables a second time. ourselves a really interesting guest. I wrote to Gore Vidal and told That spring 2006, while the back room came into its own as a him about ripe and Michael and Naomi. I invited him to come have site of intellectual and visceral indulgence, ripe itself was heating dinner at the back room. Of course he said “yes.” up into a kind of fever dream of what restaurants could be. Michael My essay pivots on this anecdote because it displays all of the and Naomi had begun cooking in a glass factory out in industrial tremendous capital that a heedless, creative venture like ripe can gen- St. Johns, a remote part of Portland. Collaborating with Esque, erate. The very ease and confidence with which this simple invitation artisan glassblowers who made much of the glassware for ripe’s three went out—and was received—stems entirely from the fact of ripe and restaurants, they had started making family supper–style meals right how it worked. Only rarely do investors looking at a bottom line have on the factory floor, cooking oysters, for example, with a two-second a chance to calculate the considerable cultural capital their work gen- thrust into the hot box. Great pools of molten glass were poured on the erates. Money was bleeding out of ripe, yes, but what the money set dinner tables, and platters of food were set on these to stay warm. Back in motion was more valuable and longer lasting. It is impossible to at ripe’s Gotham Building Tavern, aerial ballets were being performed overstate the impact ripe had on the arts in Portland. 15 matthew stadler ripe—where we come from 16

No doubt, it’s surprising to find a restaurant in the mix of a city’s these institutions are rarely in a position to lead us to new possibili- arts infrastructure. And I won’t pretend that there aren’t some, or ties. They can’t move fast or impulsively. Yet that is what great art and even many, who know Portland well and would ridicule my claim. writing do. The right to lead—to act as an artist—is paradoxically But the confidence and vitality ripe provided, the swiftly expanding reserved for those with enough money, or few enough cares, to act rings by which its myriad initiatives swept out into the city, was a independently, rashly, indefensibly. crucial fuel in the mix that helped this unlikely place grow a legible, Every now and then, money and autonomy get snared by some- dynamic arts culture. one with vision, and the resulting “business” can catalyze whole new A city’s cultural life is typically fueled by universities, galleries, worlds, which is one reason we find such a permeable membrane be- publishers, bookstores, and artist-run initiatives, such as shared studio tween the arts and business in a city like Portland. On a small scale, space, a journal, or a reading series. In the great institutional ecol- ripe made its own new world; on a larger one, the Portland-based ad ogy that is Portland’s “art scene,” ripe provided an ingredient that was firm Wieden + Kennedy irrigates its for-profit operations with a flood nearly absent from those more traditional players: at the very simplest of artistic commissions that inevitably shape the way their advertise- level, ripe insisted that art was the only priority—bureaucracy, good ments speak to the bigger world. A three-second squib of computer manners, good sense, all the calculating niceties of responsible man- sounds by Jona Bechtolt (that young man who played the back room agement … those came in a very distant last. Everything that mattered as YACHT) suddenly circles the globe as a signature tune for a video at ripe was treated as the product of our refined sensibilities—the food, game—and Jona gets enough money to pay for another year of music. the space, the people, the social chemistry. Artists were never second- For artists and writers starved for a sense of their usefulness in a city, class citizens. such opportunities can be nourishing indeed. Ripe, operating at the Ironically, this full citizenship for the arts was granted by a for- scale of the dinner table, insisted that we speak globally with whom- profit business that made its money marketing glamour. The difficul- ever we admire and say, in all truth and confidence: “Come here and ties that charitable groups or public initiatives face, in this regard, join our conversation; pay attention; what’s happening here, now, is are paradoxical and instructive. Both are burdened with a procedural worth your while.” fairness that runs counter to many of the most vital, indefensible ini- That is certainly the conviction that powered the back room and tiatives that we call art. Obliged to serve the needs of a broad public, brought us to some exciting programs that spring, including Gore 17 matthew stadler ripe—where we come from 18

Vidal (Steven Malkmus played the music that night), and a memo- nounced by e-mail the next day was this: Michael had ceded all his rable night with photographer Gregory Crewdson. Crewdson, who financial stake in the restaurants to her and left town; together with had come to Portland under the auspices of Stephanie Snyder and the the co-owners (two chefs and a battery of investors), she would be Cooley Gallery at Reed College, followed a poignant and revealing closing family supper and one restaurant, the Gotham Building Tav- hour in conversation with Stephanie by staying on to share brandy ern, while trying to rescue the much-lauded and popular clarklewis. and some wide-ranging talk with a dozen guests until the restaurant But the die was cast. By May, clarklewis was all that remained of crew finally had to kick us out. Crewdson’s off-the-clock pleasures be- ripe, and Michael and Naomi had filed for divorce. These are the cur- came the norm for our guest writers and artists. They had rarely had rents of real lives that power the sparkling, brilliant displays of culture the sorts of exchanges the back room allowed, and most went away that we all admire and devour, rarely knowing their real origins or ready to evangelize for similar programs elsewhere. costs. I remember the start of that late-April evening very well, because And so business, the snake in the garden, had come home to our flawless server, the dancer and choreographer Daniel Addy, had roost. The back room, which had been structured as an independent atypically spilled a tray of votive candles just as we were setting up nonprofit, was able to end the year afloat. But there would be no more the tables for the event. He took a deep breath and pointed out that subsidies. It was a bracing reminder of the burden of organizations Mercury was in retrograde. “Let’s just go slow,” he said, “and take it and the advantages of traveling light. When it had been just Naomi easy. Tonight is going to be very strange.” At the back room that night and Michael and their fold-down table on Failing Street, the experi- we had a lovely, slow, indulgent time. Honey Owens, playing music as ence was just as fabulous, as memorable and transforming; but success Valet, sang, “We might jump out … of restless towers.” beckoned growth, and they saw a way to ride that wave, ultimately to That same night, while we sailed past midnight drinking at the the great benefit of a vast community. It also took them far, far away emptied tables with Crewdson, Michael and Naomi were at home from the place where they started. trying to decide what to do about an intractable crisis. Ripe was hun- Partly in the shadow of this collapse, the back room planned its dreds of thousands of dollars in debt, and there was no way out of next year as a nomadic, zero-sum assemblage of available parts. That it. They considered almost everything, including simply disappearing is, we decided not to pursue any institutional permanence nor solicit to Mexico to start a new life. But in the end, the news Naomi an- programming budgets from the many patrons who had come to know 19 matthew stadler ripe—where we come from 20 and appreciate the project. Instead of making long-term commit- securing last-minute commitments from remarkable musicians whose ments to an abstract mission, we decided to conduct the back room part in the evenings has become crucial. A set of four songs by Dave as an ongoing conversation. Patrons, and anyone else interested in the Longstreth, of Dirty Projectors, at this fall’s back room with poet Lisa back room, would just have to agree to keep talking to us; whenever a Robertson and artists Hadley + Maxwell, was an especially memo- good idea came along, we’d ask for their support. rable example. And so, rather than founding another organization, we offered to In collaboration with Curtis and Stephanie Snyder, the mix of our organize interested parties around shared opportunities. In between special guests has managed to catalyze an equally rich mix in the au- events, the back room would cease to exist. dience that is drawn to these peripatetic happenings. The back room Thereby, a second year has assembled itself. The British artist is everywhere in the city, and we have learned how to think together Sutapa Biswas, in Portland for an appearance at the Portland Institute in public. Sometimes it takes until well past midnight. for Contemporary Art’s Time Based Art festival (tba), spent an The essays that follow are the printed, portable discourse of this evening at the back room in conversation with Stephanie Snyder. ongoing feast. Many of them were actually commissioned by and for John Gorman, then at Simpatica, plied us with meats, and Zach Reno the back room, while others emerged out of the conversations that played his beautifully haunting solo music. Mary Gaitskill, invited to were started there. Still others (Gore Vidal’s astonishing 1952 novel, Portland by the city’s Literary Arts program, came to the back room for example) precede the back room considerably, as a kind of grand- to talk with us about amorality, character, and the fate of fiction over parent to this still-growing child. They are all members of a broadly a meal prepared by Jason Barwikowski, who had made our last supper shared conversation. We hope they inspire enactments of this same at ripe (for the Crewdson back room) and was now at Simpatica. simple project where you live. It’s so easy to get together over great In January 2007, Naomi Pomeroy found a way to restart family food and drink. Why not make more of it? supper—now just “supper”—and return to work with the back room. We’ve had a half-dozen events together, and the zero-sum model has made a sustainable, portable, and flexible frame within which we con- tinue to work and invent. Curtis Knapp’s provision of live music, in Curtis Knapp provided me with crucial insights and descriptions of the particular, has taken full advantage of the flexibility of this model, music discussed in this essay, and I am grateful for it.